Defiant (40 page)

They had made it halfway across the bailey before Jamie detected something amiss. A discordant note in the bustle of a castle with people in residence.

The king might not be hanging his banners to alert that he would be in residence, but someone knew he was here, for . . . was that not the livery of Geoffrey de Mandeville upon the squire trotting by? And . . . Essex. Hereford. Norfolk.

Every noble or noble-aspiring man seemed to be here, or have sent a representative.

What the hell was going on?

Jamie moved them to the shadows, keeping Eva on his inner side, and almost bumped into Brian de Lisle coming down the covered stairwell.

He stopped short. “Jamie!” He clattered down the last steps, reaching out for his arm.

Jamie wanted to shove Eva into yet another alley, but there was none to be had. He needn’t have worried. When his step slowed, Eva simply sailed past him, fumbling among her skirts, muttering to herself, as if she were on an important errand.

De Lisle glanced at her—it was impossible not to—but then grabbed Jamie’s forearm in a tight grip. “Jamie Lost, you are past mad, coming here. ’Tis most good to see you.”

“And you, Brian,” Jamie replied, returning the gesture, steeling himself for things to go badly. Again. Brian was one of John’s most trusted and highly rewarded captains, smart, savvy, and, fortunately, independent-minded. He was also lethal. He would also know what the hell was going on.

“You just arrived?” Brian said.

“Aye. I was on a job.”

“I heard.” Brian’s eyes searched Jamie’s as they released one other. “You are a wanted man, Jamie. What the hell are you doing here?”

Jamie met his gazes. “Are you equally intent on me?”

Brian hesitated, then shook his head. “No reason to hate you yet, Jamie. I have yet to see you do a thing without cause.” Brian eyed him. “Want to share it?”

Jamie felt cold relief. He had not wanted to strike down Brian de Lisle. It would make things to come more difficult. “Soon. Are you willing to give me a few hours?”

Brian signaled to one of the glinting helms up on the ramparts. The guard nodded and hurried toward the stairwell. Brian looked back down. “You have less than an hour of liberty, I’d estimate, before the king arrives. You do not have the priest?”

Jamie shook his head. “He has passed on. What the devil is going on?” He gestured to the de Mandeville squire, who was just disappearing into the stables.

Brian de Lisle shook his head, but was grinning. “The king is beyond reason, Jamie, but in this, he might have had his one brilliant idea.”

“Which is?”

“Selling off the estates.”

Jamie’s heart slowed. “Which estates?”

“The d’Endshire barony was offered to sweeten the pot, but it’s a dicier issue now, as the boy was brought back last night.”

Jamie gripped his arm. “Is he here?”

Brian glanced down in surprise.

“You’ve seen him?” Jamie pressed. “D’Endshire?”

“Aye, I have seen him. I hear you did as well. Ten years a’missing, and you found him within a week.” Brian shook his head with a faint smile. “I am impressed.”

“And the king . . . ?”

Brian shrugged. “Maybe less so. Still, d’Endshire seems a loyal sort, and I expect the king will accept him. In this, a rightful heir is likely better than a bought one.”

Jamie nodded and inhaled. The news felt like a small window of reprieve. “Where is he?”

Brian’s mouth curved up in a smile. “Not on your life, Jamie.
Which it may well be, I am beginning to think.” He eyed Jamie, then someone shouted for de Lisle. Brian glanced over, waved, and turned back. “Everoot is up for sale too.”

The words echoed inside Jamie’s head. “What?”

“The king is selling Everoot to the highest bidder. Very quietly. Very quickly.”

Jamie felt it as if he’d been punched.

“De Mandeville, Essex, they all have sent emissaries. ’Tis astonishing how quickly these men can move when properly spurred,” Brian said, blithely unaware Jamie was hearing only one word in three as the blood was roaring through his head. “The king is making his move.”

“He is making a mistake,” Jamie said coldly.

Brian shrugged. “Who knows? The king might have just found a way to avert the charter and win the war, in one fell swoop.” Brian glanced over Jamie’s shoulder. “I must go.”

He gestured to the top of the stairs and one of the king’s chamberlains hurried down. “Take Sir Jamie to a room. Assuming you are still alive come sundown, we shall drink hard this night, you and I. There is much to discuss, and mayhap to celebrate.”

Brian strode off. The chamberlain looked at Jamie. Jamie smiled. “Prepare my room as Lord Brian commanded.”

“Sir—”

“I will join you there directly.”

Jamie turned and headed for the keep, the way Eva had gone, moving around the people coming down the steps of the gray-stone castle that used to be his home, that the king was selling off to the highest bidder.

L
ATE
in the day, after Jamie had ridden off, after a string of long and bitter drinks, Ry made it to the stables and began saddling his horse. A monstrous shadow loomed across the beams overhead, then stilled. Ry turned around slowly.

“God’s love, Angus,” he muttered, and turned back to saddling.

Angus took a step into the stall. “You were wrong.”

“I’m certain that is so.”

“Do you know what he’s doing up there, at Everoot?”

“Jamie? Getting himself killed.”

“Aye, well, I can no’ let that happen, see? I’m going tae settle this debt if it kills me.”

“Not if he kills himself first.” Ry dropped the flap on his saddle and patted his horse’s neck. He took up the reins and led him from the stall. Angus stood in the way, arms crossed, frowning. Ry frowned back.

“Ye look like hell,” Angus said bluntly.

“Aye, well, that’s what happens when you try to protect Jamie.”

Ry started to move past him. Angus didn’t budge. He stopped, and Angus’s gaze bored into him. “I don’t understand why ye left him.”

Ry shrugged. Because one could only save a man bent on self-destruction for so long. Ry had adequate experience with lost causes, and he finally had to admit Jamie was one. “Bored,” he said shortly.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Ry took a hard step forward and this time, the Scotsman stepped out of his way. “It means ’tis always the same thing with Jamie. Almost getting killed, almost, almost, until one day, he finally will. I don’t want to be standing there watching when it happens.”

Angus threw up his hands. “Bloody bones, Ry, that’s wholly the reason ye’re with him. We all knew, back then: Jamie’ll get himself killed, and Ry’ll bring him back again.”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

Ry glared. “Because I’m done.”

Angus glared back. “Ye always said Lost was stubborn, Ry, but no one ever beat yerself. And now?”

Ry pushed past him with a shove. “Now I’m going to clean up our mess.”

Angus turned, clinking and creaking with leather and weapons. “I’m coming with ye.”

“I mean in truth. I am picking up wardrobes and broken crockery at Jakob Doctor’s.”

“I’m coming. Jamie told me to.”

Ry stopped so short the hilt of Angus’s sword poked into his back. “What?”

“He didna want ye to do anything. . . .” The Scotsman pondered his next word for a long time. “Rash.”

Ry turned coldly. “Rash?
Rash?
Me, rash?”

Angus backed up a pace, palm in the air. “I’m just saying what Jamie said.”

Ry stared at him a moment. “Why did you leave us, all those years ago?”

Angus’s cheeks flushed. “I couldn’t take owing Jamie so much, not being able to repay him. And he never let me forget it, either.”

Ry turned on his heel and started for the door. “You do not understand Jamie. He never let you forget because he never forgot. He will never forget, and never forgive.
Himself.
There is naught I can do about it.”

“Ye’re not supposed to do anything about it, dammit,” Angus muttered. “Ye’re just his friend. Ye pledged to him.”

Ry stopped at the doorway. Spring sunshine made a threshold of light just outside the stable. “And what of me?”

Silence, then Angus said, “I s’ppse ye’re to do what ye think is right. I just don’t see how leaving him to die is the right thing here. And what of the lass?”

Ry took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what he’ll do without ye, Ry.”

“So I’m supposed to just watch him die?”

He heard Angus shift his bulk. “Well, now, Ry, I don’t know about ye, but I don’t aim to let him die. No matter how set on it he is.”

For a moment they were quiet. Then Ry turned to him. “Everoot is two days’ ride.”

“Less with fresh horses.”

“First the doctor’s. He deserves that much.”

“Quickly then, Ry,” Angus said as they started out of the stable. “Jamie looked awful determined, and I heard the king’s selling off estates.”

J
AMIE
got Eva into an unused bedchamber—there were many, as the castle was hardly full. Chambers lined the walls and several of the guard towers. He simply opened the door to one of most distant, then directed two wide-eyed servants to bring bedstuffs and clothes and a brazier to the room of the widowed countess of Misselthwaite, who’d just lost everything when her baggage train was caught in the rushing tides of The Wash, and why in the king’s name had it not been done
before
?

They stared wide-eyed at this unknown, irate nobleman shouting at them about something they should clearly have known. Then they bolted down the hall and, very soon, were back with all the ordered items as well as a few additional ones, such as candles and a plate of food and a polished metal mirror.

Eva held the mirror to her face as the maidservant scurried about under Jamie’s scowl, preparing the bath with scented herbs, then hurried out. Eva poked at her cheek, still looking in the mirror. She tilted her face to the side and peered at her profile. Pale, skinny, resolute. These were the things she could
see in her face. She could not look at Jamie too closely, else he’d see that last as well.

She set the mirror down. “You have made this all very nice,” she said placidly, circling the room.

“You’re going to be here for a while.”

She touched the bedstead. “That sounds like a threat.”

“’Tis an order, Eva.”

She ran her hand across the bed hangings hurriedly looped.

“You will wait here. I will manage this.”

She glanced out the window; it looked down on the inner bailey. She pulled her head inside and turned. “Misselthwaite?”

He shook his head with a weary smile.

“I think it is a very good-sounding name. Perhaps our cottage is a Misselthwaite.”

He reached for her hand, then pulled her to him. “Roger will be fine,” he murmured against her lips. “I shall see to it.”

She did not respond, as Jamie could not see to such a thing. He would try, of course, with his noble heart, and be dead soon afterward. Since he had an earldom to claim, clearly this was not conscionable. Sacrifices must be made, but they would not be Jamie’s. Nor Roger’s.

They would be Eva’s.

Jamie had his arms around her. It was not something she could describe, the awareness that this good man wanted her, so she didn’t try. She pressed her cheek to his chest and they held each other, breathing together. She realized her heart was expanding. She could feel it, filling up her chest, down through her groin. Filling her with Jamie. She felt as if she were all one beating heart.

That was a much better way to go out than any she’d ever imagined. And in ten years, one had time to imagine a great many unpleasant ways to go.

They both heard it, the arrival of the king and his entourage. The clatter of hooves on the cobbles in the bailey, the shouts of men and grooms, barking dogs, servants scurrying about. Then doors slamming, hooves fading as the horses were led away. Bootsteps loud, then quieter, as the men circled the keep and entered.

Neither of them moved.

Hot, bulbous tears filled Eva’s eyes. It was unimaginable, all this crying since she’d met Jamie. She closed them and squeezed him tighter.

He shifted, but only to bend his head and rest it on top of hers. The bones of his forehead pressed on her. His breath, low and even, warmed her ear. The powerful strength of him was, for a moment, in repose. He was readying, preparing. He was weary.

Eva unlaced her fingers and slid them up his back and began rubbing his shoulders.

He made a low rumbling sound, like a groan. “I must go,” he mumbled, not moving.

“Yes,” she agreed, pressing her fingers down harder, kneading in deep circles. She felt his arms droop. “In a moment. But he is already here. There is naught to prepare for, no way to position yourself where he will come before he is there himself. So, you will take this moment and receive me.”

He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face up, smiling faintly. “I will receive you tonight, Eva.”

“Perhaps a little, now?”

“There is no time now.” But he was kissing her as he said it, so she knew there was perhaps a bit of time. He backed up, bringing her forward with him, until he sat on the edge of the bed. He pulled her onto his lap, facing him, her legs on either side. His long-lashed eyes were swept closed as he trailed a line of kisses down her throat, leaving hot, red places that throbbed
when he moved away, sliding lower, his touch desperate and fierce and all about her.

She could feel his desire in the thick rod of flesh pressing between her skirts, his fierce kisses, his ever-searching hands, and, most of all, in the almost inaudible murmurs spoken against her skin. What was he saying?

She cupped the sides of his face and kissed. “Whatever it is, aye, I will,” she whispered, pulling at her skirts, tugging them recklessly up. He took over, wrenching them to her knees. He unlaced his hose swiftly and, without warning, lifted her up and lowered her down on him.